In the Summertime
Authors: Judy Astley
It’s twenty years since Miranda, then sixteen, holidayed in Cornwall and her life changed for ever. Now she’s back again – with her mother, Clare, and the ashes of her stepfather, Jack, whose wish was to be scattered on the sea overlooked by their one-time holiday home.
The picturesque cove seems just the same as ever, but the people are different – more smart incomers, fewer locals, more luxury yachts in the harbour. But Miranda and Clare both find some strangely familiar faces, and experience the emotions they both thought had disappeared.
Contents
Judy Astley
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to all the usual suspects.
To editor Linda Evans for eternal patience yet support when I need it.
To my agent Caroline Sheldon who is a supreme non-nagger yet always wonderfully positive.
To writer friends for knowing just how it is especially fellow members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. And to Janie and Mickey at Chez Castillon (
www.chez-castillon.com
), who have the most wonderful writers’ retreat with gorgeous accommodation, glorious setting and amazing hospitality. If you need time out just to work you can do no better than to book in here, especially if you have such fab retreat-mates as I did: Katie Fforde, Kate Lace, Jane Wenham-Jones and Jo Thomas.
And to my family and closest friends who tolerate the inevitable and unpredictable highs and lows of the writing process and know when
not
to ask that question all writers dread: ‘How is the book going?’
Jack’s ashes had been wedged into the car boot between the cat basket and Silva’s bag but something must have shifted because every time Miranda drove round a bend there was a thud from the back of the Passat. She risked a glance at her mother in the seat beside her but Clare had the
Guardian
in her hand and her crossword face on: teeth clamped on her lower lip and the pen tapping lightly against her jawbone. Miranda considered whether she should stop in the next lay-by – on the pretext of checking the cat – and rearrange things so Jack’s urn would stop rolling around. He had never liked being a passenger. Being driven made him feel a bit queasy and even though he was now reduced to gritty grey dust she still felt his remains should be made as comfortable as possible.
‘Granddad’s got loose,’ Silva said, kicking the back of the driving seat with her new pink Converses. Miranda
gripped the steering wheel more tightly. Now Silva had drawn attention to the thumping, any minute now Clare would start a ‘Do you remember the time he …’ conversation which would certainly go on for the rest of the journey, with the only contribution from the back of the car being the click-click of Silva’s thumbs-on iPad and the tish-tish of too-loud music leaking from Bo’s headphones. Oh, and the roll-clunk of Jack.
‘You
must
let Mum talk about him,’ Miranda’s sister Harriet had said on the phone after Miranda had lightly grouched that she’d heard three times, that day, the story of when Jack had climbed on to the Cornwall cottage roof with a broom handle to poke down a trapped rook. Well of
course
she let Clare talk about him. What did Harriet think she was going to do? Say, ‘Hey, enough of the memories now, Mum, he’s been gone six months; move on’? Sharing the role of listener would be a help, but Harriet was comfortably miles away being ambitious in television in Salford and newly blissed up with a footballer boyfriend. Their sister Amy was living in France (the youngest, still – at twenty-six – often referred to by Clare as ‘the baby’) and had copped right out, claiming she couldn’t talk to their mother about Jack because it just
upset her too much
.
‘Has he, darling? Is that the thudding noise?’ Clare looked up from the crossword and turned to Silva. Miranda looked in the rear-view mirror and caught the full blast of Silva’s glorious smile, directed at Clare.
These days it didn’t often come Miranda’s way. Silva, at the far end of being thirteen, was setting the tone for her teenage years and more often than not giving her mother the hellcat face.
‘It doesn’t matter, you know,’ Clare told her granddaughter. ‘He can’t feel it.’
‘He might,’ Silva said. ‘You can’t be sure.’
‘I think we can, Silv,’ Miranda said quietly, hoping Silva would take the hint that this was time to shut up a bit. Clare could still be tipped easily over the edge into tears. Soft, silent ones that simply fell from her eyes and down her face with no fuss and no noise, as if Clare were apologizing for her sadness. Somehow Miranda found this more heartbreaking than if Clare had hurled herself about in lavish displays of noisy grief. This was to-the-core mourning. Miranda couldn’t share it, couldn’t lighten that awful burden, whatever she tried.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Clare’s childlike question, the sudden change of focus, startled Miranda. Also, Clare should know the answer; that she’d had to ask was strange. For most of Miranda’s childhood, right up to when she was nearly seventeen, the family had visited their cottage in Chapel Creek every summer. Clare had once known, and driven, every inch of the A30.
‘Well, we’ve passed Bodmin Moor,’ Miranda told her. ‘So no, not long now. An hour, tops.’
‘This bit of road’s new,’ Clare commented, putting the newspaper down on the floor and her pen in her bag as
if already neatly prepared for the journey’s end. ‘But then it’s been nearly twenty years. Everything changes.’ She sighed and dabbed a tissue at her eyes. ‘Everything bloody changes.’
And yet some things don’t, Miranda thought. Hot sunny weather always made her think of that last summer at Chapel Creek, and Steve. She hadn’t seen him for twenty years and wasn’t likely to now, but she did find he got into her head whenever the scent of the sea was in the air and the summer sun warmed her limbs. That was normal, wasn’t it? You never forgot your first one.
As Miranda drove into the village, Clare was surprised she felt no sense of ownership when they passed Creek Cottage. It was so long now since she and Jack had sold the house, soon after that mad August when Celia from the next cottage along the creek had looked in through the window just at the moment when Eliot Lynch had got Clare backed up against the kitchen dresser and was kissing her lavishly. That illicit kiss was a memory she’d held on to in delicious secrecy for a long time after, getting it out to cheer herself up a bit when she and Jack went through the inevitable stale periods of ennui that punctuate long-term marriages. Eyes closed, late at night, and unable to sleep, she would remember the harsh graze of Eliot’s stubble on her skin, the taste of Scotch and recent Gauloises. Ah Eliot, Clare thought as
she noted the current owners had extended into the attic and installed white plantation shutters at ‘her’ windows, where are you now? He was still alive, that much she assumed, as his passing would have made the news and the obituaries. He hadn’t had a book out for a few years, but that might be because he didn’t need or want to write any more. Four of his blockbuster novels had been hugely successful films so he’d probably retired. It was likely: all those years ago he’d seemed to her already pretty ancient – baggy of body, unfit and a bit wheezy – but thinking about it he had probably only been in his mid-fifties, about the age she was now, possibly even younger. She hoped he was all right, that he still had his fast, feisty mind and those seductive traces of a Cork accent. Selling Creek Cottage had meant she and Jack lost touch with him and Liz, and also with Celia and Archie. It wasn’t actually so surprising how those easy summer friendships hadn’t translated to full-time ones. What had hippyish Clare and artist Jack really had in common with prim Celia and golf-mad Archie? ‘We must meet up in London,’ everyone would trill brightly each September as the cars were loaded and houses closed up at summer’s end, but addresses were rarely exchanged and when they were it would be a Christmas card at the most.
‘It’s still very much a holiday homes place, isn’t it?’ she commented as Miranda turned off the village road and headed up the lane towards the hillside houses
where Eliot and Liz and their children had spent their summers. Liz, Eliot’s much younger second wife, had hated it here, Clare recalled: loathed the never-ending soft Cornish rain, the hearty sailing club set with their flapping, dripping waterproofs, the lack of fancy restaurants or chic London shops. She’d been scared of the blind rural dark at night and complained about roosters crowing long before sun-up and the spooky whoo-hoo of owls. She’d openly yawned her way through Celia’s tales of tacking up-river against wind and tide and Archie’s of the tricky par four on the fifteenth at Mullion.
‘I don’t suppose much has changed,’ Miranda said, ‘but probably lots of people will have had to sell up by now. House prices are still ridiculous here; I had a quick Google yesterday, just to see. Not much sign of the recession kicking in yet.’ She turned the car in through a pair of blue-painted iron gates and pulled up in front of the house she’d rented.
‘OK everyone, we’re here.’ Miranda’s voice was bright and encouragingly upbeat as she switched off the engine and quickly opened her door. ‘Help with the unloading, kids!’
Clare didn’t move but sat looking out, puzzled. ‘Here? But why are we
here
? Isn’t this … yes, this is Eliot and Liz’s house. Are we staying with … them?’ For a crazy, panicky moment she imagined the two of them hurtling down the steps to greet them with hugs. Or
rather Eliot hurtling – Liz would teeter down in her high shoes with a smile set like cement.
Miranda sat down in the car again to explain. ‘I know it’s theirs, Mum. Or was. I did tell you, when I booked it. They aren’t here any more – they sold it years ago. Whoever owns it now has it as a holiday rental and it was the biggest available, the only one we could all fit into. You’ve forgotten, that’s all.’ She patted Clare’s hand. ‘There’s the pool for the children and the lovely sunny terrace where you can sit and read in the sun. It’ll be fine. And don’t you remember how gorgeous the house used to be inside? It’s changed a bit but it’s still a stunner, I promise.’
Clare felt like a small child being gently coaxed. ‘I’m not old enough for that sort of forgetting,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s not the start of something.’
Miranda unfastened her mother’s seat belt and got out of the car again. Bo and Silva were already out, racing up the path to the front door, arguing about bagging the biggest room. ‘It’s not the start of anything, Mum, it’s just … the way things are for you right now. You’ll recover in time.’
‘But will I?’ Clare asked, her eyes wide and wet. ‘How
do
people? I don’t even know where to start. I hate being like this. It’s not
me
.’
‘It’s all right. You’ve started.
This
is the start.’ Miranda opened the car boot and took out the cat basket from which fat ginger Toby stared at her with big confused
eyes. Clare climbed out of the car and moved to take out some of the luggage, seeing the urn full of Jack lying like a tipped-over coffee flask beside Miranda’s suitcase. For a horrible moment, she imagined how it would be if the lid had loosened on the journey and the contents had leaked out. She’d have had to ask Miranda to hoover them up. And then what would be done with them? When they went to scatter the rest of Jack on the sea, would they have to take the vacuum cleaner bag with them as well and turn out all that was inside? But then Jack wouldn’t float away like a free, pale shadow on the water as he’d wanted but would be clogged with carpet fluff, wads of hair, crumbs and spiders. She quickly lifted her bag from the boot and left the urn where it was. That had been a mad train of thought, dangerously close to running way out of control. Perhaps Miranda was right. Maybe once they’d carried out Jack’s request and consigned his ashes to the water he’d once loved she could start to feel a bit more sane. Right now, all that seemed to be in her head was a woolly feeling that real life was suspended for the duration, possibly for ever.
‘Mum, I’m
not
sharing with Bo!’ Silva shouted. ‘He’s like
soo
stinky? Boy-stink!’ Bo was sitting on the stairs with his headphones still on and his head rocking slightly, oblivious to Silva’s grievance and waiting to be told where to go and what to do. Fourteen years’ worth of
passivity, Miranda thought, wondering where her bright, active little boy had gone. Everyone had warned her you couldn’t expect more from a boy at that age than a growth spurt and some grunting. How true.